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I am a 51 year old woman, no children, married, 75 kg 1,63m tall.at school I could not do sports, no paties with disco lights,load music, everything seems to trigger a dizzy spell - no driving through lanes of trees, where sun shine, and darkness etc, if really influenced my teenage life in so many ways.I get dizzy which last for a few hours, have to sleep it off, afterwards I feel better. lying down, and rest aswhile does not help. this started when i was about 10 years old. EEG and MR scans could not show any brain abnormalities.at age 30 perhabs, I was given Epilim and Azor,5mg (3 pills in the morning) which seemed to help.I suddenly felt much better and could live a little since my teens were gone, 1 attack yearly, instead of atttacks all the time. no perticular pattern to the dizzy spells. it happened any time, relaxing momens, running, swimming, playing ball, you name it..., any time of day , sudden, and so dizzy, I vomid.my reason for a dr advise once again, is about a year ago, I gained more symptoms:I stumbled and hit my head very hard on the serface, and i was suddenly dizzy in a flash with all the other symptoms, my husband could not lift me from the ground, with difficulty he got me on the bed.1.numbness in both my legs, exstreme shock pains shooting up in my legs up till my buttocks.2.off balance , not always, but I have to sit down to dress, if not, I fall over.3.slurry speech - this is very bad.4. I also find, that if i become tired these days, my speech is slurry.5. tiredness - but not a type of tiredness from not sleeping, body dead tiredness.6.I am seeing the 4 neurologist in my lifetime the 13of Aug and also a EEG, and would like to know if you can with this symptoms more or less tell me, what kind of epilepsy courses this.Is this Epilepsy? for starters, dizzyness does not seem to be a symptom of epilepsy.but since I have lived so long with the dizzyness, and the azor helped, i coped.the leg numbness, slurry speech, pain in legs, is my concern. I always think I am having a stroke.this is symptoms I do not wish upon my worst anymy.I started a job in March 2012 of this year, and hope it will turn into a permanent position, but on the 7th of Aug, 15 minutes before i left work, i got dizzy, and all the other symptoms. luckily I drove with my boss to work - I drive 35 km to work, she took me to the GP, and my husband helped me out of the car.my bloodsugar and blodd pressure were normal.
Optional Information: Person's Gender: Female Person's Age: 51 Already Tried: AZOR .5MG AND EPILIM
Hi, this is Dr Sathya and I am very glad to help you with your question.
Dizziness is not a common or prominent symptom of epilepsy or seizures, it can occur but not as a prominent symptom. Your mri & eeg have not revealed any abnormal findings and this also once again implies the chances of epilepsy or seizure is less likely. It is really difficult to explain how epilim helped you because it is a seizure med, but as long as it helped it is fine. And azor is a blood pressure med, it might help you if high blood pressure was the cause for your dizziness, not otherwise.
There are myriad causes for dizziness as listed below;
Severe dehydration
Blood pressure changes (low or high) - yours appears fine
Anemia
Hypoglycemia (low blood glucose)
Thyroid gland dysfunction
Heart dysfunction
Autonomic nervous system dysfunction
POTS (postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome)
Vasovagal syncope/presyncope (a type of neurally mediated fainting)
Medication side effects
Decreased blood flow to the brain
Rapid breathing, stress/anxiety disorder/panic disorder/nervousness etc
Ear problems etc
I am not telling all these above are applicable in your case, in fact many of these above might already have been ruled out in your case, I am just providing you with a list of possibilities based on what we see in our clinical practice and if you feel any of the above conditions have not been ruled out yet, for example "autonomic nervous system dysfunction" or POTS (postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome)
etc then you may talk to your clinic drs about it and they will arrange appropriate investigations to rule out such possibilities.
For the leg numbness & pain in the legs you need an MRI of the spine & EMG/Nerve conduction test to look for any problems in the spine or peripheral nerves to explain these symptoms. If you had no recent brain MRI done then you need it too, just to make sure you have no stroke or MS etc to explain the slurring of speech, numbness etc.
Please ask me if there are any further questions. And if you are satisfied with my answer click on smiley face to compensate me for the time and effort put by me in answering your question.
Best regards,
Dr Sathya.
Experience: American Board Certified Neurologist, Internal Medicine
Epilim did not really help me, that is why I stopped using it, but continued with the Azor, which seemed to be off help. I googled Azor up before, and saw it was high blood pressure meds, but if I stop it, I feel shaky and not at all good, very disoriented. Is this meds common to a drug not easily left out.?
the leg numbness and the pain goes along with the dizzyness, this is not a seperate thing, I do not have it all the time.
as soon as I start feeling dizzy, legs are shaky and numb, and the terrible shock wave pain. the slurry speech also go along with the dizzyness, legs numbness , pain in legs. all these symptoms generates from 1 attack. I have to sleep for quite a few hours before I feel fine again to go on.
Okay if epilim did not help you then it was a right decision to stop it. And azor helping you is bit of a puzzle, and I see that you are having problems in coming off it, so one thing you may try is tapering off it gradually, for example reduce by 1/4th (0.25) of the tablet once every week and see whether this helps to come off it.
I see that all your symptoms occur together and along with dizziness. Although I cannot still call these as seizures however if all these symptoms occur together then seizure possibility cannot be totally ruled out.
I know you had EEG, but if it was the routine EEG (simple or regular EEG) but not the special EEG like video-EEG then video-EEG is required too to confidently rule out seizure disorder.
During the Video-EEG you will be admitted to an epilepsy unit in a hospital and monitored for one to few days with continuous EEG recording & simultaneous continuous video monitoring. During this monitoring if your typical episodes are captured (dizziness plus other symptoms) then these episodes are correlated with any EEG changes that may occur, and this will shed more light into the nature of these episodes (whether these episodes are seizures or not, if seizures then what kind of seizures, epileptic, non epileptic/functional seizures etc).
In place of video-EEG sometimes another special EEG called as ambulatory EEG too may be substituted which also may help in telling whether the episodes are epileptic seizures or not.
If these are epileptic seizures then you may need to try other seizure meds like Levetiracetam, Trileptal, Lamotrigine etc. If seizure meds do not help then certain specialized diet like "modified Atkins diet" etc might help. If none of these help then a surgical treatment called as VNS (vagal nerve stimulator) may help to control these seizure episodes (provided these are indeed seizures - based on the above mentioned special EEGs).
And the special EEGs rule out the possibility of seizures/epilepsy then I had already mentioned earlier about autonomic nervous system disorders, POTS etc - and these conditions need to be ruled out too, since these orders too can cause your symptoms.
Feel free to ask me your question in the field of neurology, including, but not limited to: XXXXX XXXXX neuromuscular disease, Parkinson disease.